The Planet Crafter

Personal Rating: Extremely Positive (96%) So, when I first bought this game, I spent 4 hours on it and quit, because I saw 0 progress happening. 2 days ago, I came back to it, and immediately got hooked. So, let's review! The Gameplay: You are terraforming this unknown planet that you landed on, either alone or with friends. Your ultimate goal is to make the planet habitable. And yes, it's a grind, but you need to survive the first 5 hours, then the game WILL shift into higher gear, trust me. The resource gathering is similar to Subnautica, so if you like that game, this game can hook you too. The graphics: The game sometimes goes under 60 FPS, but nothing too horrible. I have it on the highest settings too, so optimisation is okay. Negatives: The cliffs - while The Planet Crafter IS an open world game, and you can get past those cliffs, they really make you think you are caged some sort of valley. And of course, it obscures the view. I know they are there to make some stuff not that accessible from the start, but c'mon. But still, The Planet Crafter is a rare gem of a game that respects your grind, and the more you play, the more you see the planet change.

A simulator of slave labor for Elon Musk, except instead of a normal salary, you're planting trashy moss on Mars. Slaving away for 50 hours just to see a miserable puddle and two butterflies. The perfect way to finally bury your personal life. Recommended!

This is one of those "clunky" indie developer games that are clunky and basic in their execution but delivers a satisfying sense of progress and relaxation when playing with your friends.. untill those goblins begins to build modules for their waaagh mobile.. Gameplay is mostly linear in an open map/world. You begin with nothing but a cheap black&decker suit and multitool and find yourself needing to make your upgrades and build your first base, then focus on building items that increases : Pressure , Heat , Oxygen and etc. You explore, find crashed ships, loot, seeds for oxygen and once your planet is fully terraformed you can FLY to other planets.. and guess what? the planets you see in the skyboxes are playable planets that changes appearances as you terraform them so thats a neat touch of detail. Comfy game to play in co-op, Next update is adding crossplay co-op between pc and console.

Running this game on an older PC, never had any issues. Gameplay is never-ending, and once you figure a few things out, you can just keep playing even after you complete the planets quest to be able to leave the planet. I do wish the game had a better way point system for objectives. Sometimes finding where you need to go can be a pain, but I sometimes enjoyed the hunt. I have only played it for about 345 hours or so. It is a great game for killing time.

OMG WOW. This is one of those games where every second I'm just like, let it cook, let it cook. As it sinks its hooks into me, 30 min of curiousity turned into 4 hours and it felt like I only played 30 min. HIGHY RECOMMEND WITH ALL THE DLC. First play through dont do the DLC, go there after you get through the first world!

This game is basically a lesser Subnautica that is also much more grindier. The amount of time you waste picking terribly rendered elements from the ground and chasing (disappearing) elements from asteroids are enormous. There are no real stakes in the game past early game. All kinds of game mechanics are very simplified. You can just build any power generator anywhere on the planet, it will magically connect to your invisible grid and power your stuff for example. The objective of the game is: You want a number to go up and it will go up, that's it. You build machines and then you build more machines just to make various numbers go up. It's super repetitive. Something that really grated me was constantly finding loot boxes even at very remote locations that are clearly there to reward the player for exploring that point. The existence of these boxes give the game a theme park feeling rather than a survival environment where you're terraforming a planet to save yourself. At some point, you end up relying these kinds of loot boxes for efficient access to rarer elements of advanced materials and that sucks because they are not a renewable resource (your other option typically is to grind harder). On the positive side, seeing the planet change as you terraform it more and more is cool. You can also discover a bunch of stuff, which was interesting. Ultimately, I don't feel like there is enough meat on the bones though...

First hours are fun, then it's just repetitive and uninteresting tasks to do. I am ok with grinding but here it feels like a constant pointless grind to create a higher tier machine that increases exactly the same stat but faster. It would be ok if the world was interesting to explore, but no, it feels empty, the lore is scarce, and there are no enemy or entity to interact with. There is no feeling of immersion like subnautica at all. When you get to some other pod or settlement, it is basically always a few chests and a message like "life is hard on this planet, I hope I can make it", quickly boring. Also the building system does not make any sense. You don't need foundation, your building can just float in the air, and trees can grow through them later. It is certainly easier to code when you don't need to account for those things, but it feels cheap and less immersive, especially when it was already done better in subnautica.

Nobody reads these it doesn't even matter what I say I could say that your mom's gay and nobody would even read it My PC sounds like a jet engine when I run this game 10/10

I don't think this is a particularly bad game but the fact that is has overwhelmingly positive reviews is kind of crazy to me. This is like a mid tier fun enough game but it is so scuffed in so many ways and feels like every feature was added with minimal polish. The menus themselves feel like prototypes you'd find in a alpha. Honestly if you haven't already played Subnautica or Satisfactory go buy either of those first before playing this. Once again the game is fun enough but it feels so unpolished.